The Softer Side of Andrew Dice Clay

He was the first comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. He starred in movies and on TV shows, and he released hit comedy albums. He was, at least nearly 30 years ago, one of the biggest comedians in the world. Then he fell. Hard. His movies bombed, his albums stopped selling, he couldn't get TV gigs, he had money problems—everything that could go wrong for a guy in showbiz went wrong for The Diceman. "I peaked at one point in my life, I got a lot of backlash for it," Andrew Dice Clay tells Esquire.com over the phone, "but I have such a strong belief in who I am as a performer, that I would not bend [and get] angry at the business."

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If there's one thing Dice has never lacked, it's confidence. He's confident enough to talk about his glory days as if they were yesterday—constantly bringing up the MSG sellouts, for example ("No one had ever done that"). He has always been confident as a performer: unafraid, as almost every other shock comedian, to swear, to talk about graphic sex, to offend—and often to a fault. In 1989, Dice was banned from the MTV Video Music Awards for life (though he later returned) when he went off script to deliver "adult nursery rhymes." In 1990, Clay hosted Saturday Night Live, which prompted a boycott from musical guest Sinéad O'Connor and cast member Nora Dunn, citing the sexism and homophobia in his act. Those days, everyone had an opinion on The Diceman. And through the rise and fall, he's always stood by his act and his jokes. "When the press started coming after me in '89, I couldn't back down from that," Clay says. "I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. Dice was not self-deprecating. It was a comedic superhero."

If Dice was a superhero, time was his kryptonite. Today, he's as mortal as the rest of us—and as mortal, in particular, as Andrew Dice Clay, who is a remarkably different person than his on-stage persona. In recent years, Clay has finally begun showing that humanity on screen. Starting with a recurring role on Entourage, he's made a slow—very slow—return as a more subtle actor. In 2013, he gave a tragic and honest performance as Augie in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. This year, he's the coked-out radio guy on the Martin Scorsese-directed HBO series Vinyl. And on April 10, Clay makes his biggest debut in decades with his own Showtime series, Dice. In it, Clay plays a fictionalized version of himself: a well-intentioned asshole who maintains his bravado even in the face of crippling failure. And the show truly shines when you see Andrew, the vulnerable human, rather than The Diceman, the leather-wearing, chain smoking, Brooklyn tough-guy hyperbole.

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Driven by the writing of Old School's Scot Armstrong, Dice at once pokes fun at Clay's own downfall, glorifies his golden years, and apologizes for all of it. In one scene at a same-sex wedding, the groom calls out Dice for his sexist and homophobic stand-up. Dice's response: There's a difference between Andrew and Dice. It's almost an apology—at least the closest he's gotten in decades. "When I'm on stage as the comedian, it's basically one note," Clay says. "The people love it. They laugh. But actually being able to play myself, with all the different sides of my personality, is actually what I enjoy doing. In reality, I'm a heartfelt guy. Doing this show, I get to show people a little bit more about myself, that he's a real human being, that he hurts like everyone else, that he cries."

Clay's goal with the show was to show this broken character who always ended up pissing people off—not far from semi-autobiographical comedian-focused shows like Louie or Curb Your Enthusiasm. And Clay first pitched the show by doing just that: During the filming of Vinyl, the real-life Clay walked into Scorsese's office and asked about the script for Dice he had shown him. As Clay tells the story, Scorsese was interested. "He says, 'Yeah, I'm thinking about directing that,'" Clay recounts. "And I look at him and go, 'Well you have a lot on your plate.' And he says 'No, no I'll make time.' And I say, 'No do me a favor and give me Rob Reiner's number.' And he says, 'I'm telling you I want to direct and you want Reiner?'" Dice was just pushing his buttons, of course, while recording the interaction with his phone the whole time. He leaves the room, returns, and shows Scorsese the whole thing. "There's your show," he says. "Dice just ruins everything."

It's not perfect—but Dice has never been perfect, either. On this side of selling out MSG, this has been the peak of Clay's career. "Now I'm at least getting to do the things I wanted to do my whole career," Clay says. "I wanted to work with the Woodys and Scorseses, and do the right television show for me." Whichever guy you're expecting to see—Andrew Dice Clay the actor, or The Diceman the persona—they're both back, whether you like it or not.